Frentorish Tori Bowie

Frentorish "Tori" Bowie was born in Sand Hill, Rankin County, Mississippi, and was raised by her grandmother Bobbie Smith after being placed in foster care as an infant. She competed in basketball and track, winning two NCAA indoor and outdoor long jump titles at the University of Southern Mississippi before transitioning to elite sprinting.

At the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Bowie delivered a magnificent medal haul: bronze in the 200m, silver in the 100m, and gold anchoring the US 4x100m relay alongside Tianna Bartoletta, Allyson Felix, and English Gardner. At the 2017 World Athletics Championships in London, Bowie achieved her crowning individual triumph: with an extraordinary desperate dip at the finish line, she edged Marie-Josée Ta Lou by one-hundredth of a second to win the World 100m gold medal in 10.85 seconds, followed by another 4x100m gold. Tragically, in April 2023, Bowie died alone in her Florida home from childbirth complications while eight months pregnant, shining a spotlight on the crisis of Black maternal mortality in the United States.